Hi, I´m back to share the promised photos of Hannah! The weather is terrible here in Denmark, so it´s really hard to take really good photos without daylight, but I have tried, and here are my results:

My husband said she was a bit pale, so I gave her a little more rosie cheeks and nose. I also made her eyebrows darker, and added clear varnish on her eyeballs and lips ;-)

I love her pose! She is standing firmly on both her feet, relaxed and in balance.

Today, I would like to talk about armature. In a artdoll, the armature is really important. It makes the doll sturdy and strong, and will prevent parts from breaking off and so on. It will also help the doll hold it´s own weight. Hannah has hot a strong armature, made with 4mm aluminum wire, steel wire, wooden sticks to control the joints and rock hard Magic sculpt to make hips and legs very strong.

Even though I thought the armature was strong enough, it wasn´t. Another thing that was annoying me was, that her legs kept bending in the wrong direction. And then suddenly her left leg broke of at the hip! I had to remove alle the quilt padding, the wooden sticks and open the entire armature, to discover that it was the aluminum wire that had broken apart! It had become weak after too much motion.

I therefor resculpted her entire legs with Magic Sculpt, then covered them with paperclay. Sanding, sanding and more sanding ;-) Not a fun proces, but necessary. The Magic Sculpt was probably getting a bit old, because it was really hard to sculpt, and that´s why I covered it up after with paperclay.

So, aluminum wire is not strong enough! I liked it because it was light and very easy to bend and work with, but the armature can´t brake like that! Depressinly, later on it braked again... This time at the shoulder.... It broke after she was almost done, so there is no way I´m opening her up again. Her arm is protected by layers of masking tape, quilt padding and glued clothing, but it was a tremendous dissapointment to me after all that work, to discover that the alumium wire broke again! I confess, that I have been posing her a lot, back and forth, up and down, to find her right posing statue, but a doll shouldn´t be sold as slightly poseable, if she has a aluminum armature, and that is what I thought I was maling. Over time, she will eventually brake, so this is my advise to all you doll artists out there: don´t use it aluminium wire. Use strong and hard steel wire instead.

Even though she isn´t perfect, I still love her. She will stand in my studio radiating good vibrations. Thank god I didn´t sell her or a similar doll. What a shame to discover that it would brake one day.

Another funny thing is her facial expression. I think she´s looking very friendly, but my husband thinks that she looks worried. An old friend on Book of Faces found her a bit condescending! I thought to myself: "What??" How can it be, that we all are seeing her expression so differently? How do you see her expression?

Well, I guess it is back to the sculpting table for me. This time I´m bringing my new book with me, as recommended by Dee Schiller from Oddfae: